“I have sent books and music there, and all / Those instruments with which high spirits call / The future from its cradle, and the past / Out of its grave, and make the present last / In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, / Folded within their own eternity.”

“[Poetry] strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bear the naked and sleeping beauty which is the spirit of its forms.”

“Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted.”

“All things exist as they are perceived: at least in relation to the percipient. 'The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being.”

“I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne, and yet must bear,— Till death like sleep might steal on me And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.”

“Perhaps the only comfort which remainsIs the unheeded clanking of my chains,The which I make, and call it melody.”

“The great secret of morals is Love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.”